Hi guys,

I've been reading the forum here for a while, and I'm very impressed with the amount of information available. I'm hoping somebody can help me with my current problem.

We have a call center, with about 12-15 agents logged in at any time. Customers dial in via a huntgroup, 2002, which uses a keyset list for it's members.

Customers call in, and hit the huntgroup. Prior to some work I did to modify the timers, the call would just ring endlessly with no announcement. Now, I've got the initial announcement happening as expected, but when the announcement is finished playing it just goes back to ringing instead of a holding pattern of silence.

I've inherited this platform, so my knowledge is limited and I apologise for that. What information can I provide everybody here to help me get to where I need to be. Here's a diagram of what I'm hoping for:

1. Customer calls and an agent answer if they're available.
2. If no agent is available, an announcement thanks the customer for calling and states their call will be answered asap.
3. Following the announcement, the call sits in silence until an agent is available and answers.
4. After overflow timer is reached, the announcement plays again, and returns the caller to silence.

I'm working to find the version information for our phone system and will provide that as soon as it's available. Thanks in advance for any and all help!

In the Digit Translations of the CRA that you created for the Announcement what does it say for Timeout? It should be Hangup.

Also make sure your Audio for Calls Camped onto this Device and Audio for Camped-On Announcement Calls on the Hunt Group itself is set to either Silence or Board. I think the default is Ringback.

Thanks for the reply, I've changed the camp-on settings for the CRA, and for the "Audio for Camped-On Announcement Calls" I only have ringback or Announcement Station. Any ideas?

Also, we're experiencing an issue where calls progressing through this hunt group, 2002, are somehow making their way over to a monitor-only hunt-group, 2001, which is causing a lot of misdirected calls. Any ideas where this might happen? Thanks again for your help!

I hate to liven a 1+ year old post but this never seems to have been solved and I currently am in the same situation of inheriting a platform and not getting queues properly.

Here is how my setup is supposed to work

1) Caller rings in
2) Rings twice
3) no answer, move to main operator (2 rings)
4) no answer move to queue
5) overflow should wait for 60 seconds before sending to voicemail otherwise next free agent picks up.


Here is the current setup once it rings to the huntgroup:

a) I adjusted my timer for the HG so that it only rings twice (8 seconds roughly)

b) added the main operator to the members of the HG second as the next free agent

c) My overflow announcement is set to hangup already

d) Camped device calls is "board"

e) Camped Announcement calls is set to "ringback" as i only have "ring back" our "announcement station" to choose from.

My timer settings on the HG are as follows:
No Answer Advance: 8
Announcement: 18
Overflow: 15
Recall: 60
Wrap Up: 15 (has big red X over it)
Avg. Connect time: 60

I'm sure its just something small I'm missing but I have beat me head against this for hours now with no luck. Any thoughts?

Specifically, what happens to the calls?

Yeah it might have helped if I mentioned that. They just continue to ring at the huntgroup until answered.

Calls will stay in the hunt group until the recall timer expires, then will route to the Recall destination.

What is your Recall destination?

Recall destination is CRA 2500.

Do I need to set this to the overflow station instead?

If I do that, when does a call actually get to voicemail? It seems like it would be in a never-ending loop.

For clarification on annoucement, overflow and recall destinations - go to your hunt group and press F1 for help. It's explained pretty well.

Not sure why this is missing as I typed it in recall destination 2500 is voicemail.

Overflow should be active lines with no place to go should be held in queue.

Recall after the timer expires should be voicemail.

Pretty certain I have this understanding correct. I will try setting it to the queue destination now per recommendation.

Not really sure what you’re trying to accomplish. Let’s break the hunt group function down further:

Assuming a Linear Search Type, calls will be presented to the members in the order listed, based on the No Answer Advance timer. This will continue until something happens to stop the process.

The first timer (other than No Answer Advance) to comes into play is the Announcement station. The Announcement station is normally a Call Routing Announcement (CRA) that plays an apology greeting. The Announcement station is activated only once.

The next timer is the Overflow station. Again, this is normally a CRA with an apology greeting. However, the Overflow station is repeated again every time the Overflow timer expires, until the Recall timer expires.

The Recall destination pulls the call away from the hunt group when the timer expires.

The Time Out destination for Announcement and Overflow CRAs should always be Hang Up. This will cause the call to remain in queue. They (along with the Recall destination) should never time out to the hunt group itself.

I can’t say that I agree with the logic on the call routing that you’ve listed, but if that’s what you want…

Enter the members in the order that the phone should ring. Set the Announcement timer for about 20 seconds with a very brief apology greeting. Leave the Overflow blank. Set the Recall timer for 60 seconds, routing to a CRA that times out to a mailbox.

As to music, remember that the Trunk Group MOH settings also determine what is heard by the caller.

Here is what I have

Our announcement is CRA 2508 which says hey we're busy, we'll be with you in a moment. This plays once (per caller). If I unserstand this and you correctly, this plays when Announcement timer expires (18 seconds currently). Digit translation for this is empty with timeout being "hang up" and its audiotex is the greeting.

The overflow station is CRA 2509 which is a generic "thanks for holding we'll be with you shortly" message. Its repeated after every 15 seconds (I think I need this longer than the announcement timer, correct?). This repeats 3 times then recall kicks in (at 60 seconds). Same digit translation (timeout=hangup), has its own greeting selection, followed by "position in queue" recording.

Recall was set to VM, but just changed to 2509 per previous post. Per this post recall is at 60 and changed back to CRA 2500 (vm timeout).

I can't leave the overflow timer blank, specifies out of range error (1-255). Or do you mean overflow destination?


As for the logic, this is what the client said they had before (they switched to an answering service) and now are switching back. They explicityly want the two rings then move to queue so my "no answer advance" is 8 seconds to accommodate.

I would much rather set it up so

1) Caller rings in
2) Rings twice to huntgroup (4 receptionists)
3) no answer, the call lives in queue/overflow (assuming all busy)
4) 60 second recall before sending to voicemail otherwise, next free agent picks up.

Leave the Overflow destination blank. You only need one apology greeting during a 60 second call. A 5 to 10 second greeting repeated every 15 seconds is more than a little obnoxious.

The Recall destination needs to be a CRA that times out to a mailbox. If you recall to the VM application, your caller will hear “Welcome to the Inter-Tel voice processing system. Please enter a mailbox number”.

I would never program a hunt group as you describe; it’s just plain crappy workflow. The phone rings twice, then the call disappears just as the agent is reaching for the phone. That is repeated amongst several agents, then the calls dumps into voice mail after only a minute.

Someone now has to be tasked to listen to the message, and then play phone tag with the caller. Instead of properly routing the call and servicing the customer the first time, you waste time and money chasing them. But hey, what do I know?

Oh I agree with the workflow issues but this is what the client has expressed she wants and I can do nothing but comply here. Customer is always right here but hey what do I know?

I’ve never subscribed to the theory that the customer is always right, not when it comes to designing a telephone system.

With the hundreds of systems I’ve designed, I went down that path once. Learned my lesson and never repeated the mistake.

Our customers spend lots of money on a tool that can either enhance the bottom line or hurt it. It’s up to us professionals to make sure which way it goes.

If a hunt group recalls to a VM app and there is a mailbox that matches the hunt group extension, then the caller will hear that mailbox greeting and they will be able to leave a message. The message notification location can be any extension on the PBX. IOW, you don't need to send the recall destination to a CRA that times out to a mailbox. Unless you have another reason to.

Okay, so the VM works after 60 seconds, took out the overflow destination so they don't hear a message every 15 seconds as recommended.

I guess the only thing I am having trouble figuring out is this "queue" she keeps mentioning. With 4 receptionists at this small office, i have moved it to three rings. This is ample time for all of them to answer if they aren't busy.

When she says queue, she indicates that no phones ring as if they are held somewhere, and then once they are free (before recall timer expires) it should ringback to that free agent(s).

I'm trying to follow this admin guide https://laseronecom.com/v6.0/assects/resources/mitel/5000%20guides/5000_2.3_admin_%20guide.pdf working with pages 122/123

In this case would I make a new huntgroup with a ghost station as use that as the "queue"?

Make sure that the flag Camp-Ons Allowed are enabled on that hunt group.

Yep that setting is there. Here is a screenshot of the HG settings:

I am having the same problem where the hunt group rings to the phones however they are unable to pick it up.

Are the phones actually ringing, or are you hearing the camp-on indication? The display should tell you what's happening.

If the calls are camped-on but not presented, the agent is logged out of the hunt group.